


In Triplicate

by atsuyuri_sama



Series: Behind Glowing Eyes [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Feels, Episode Related, First Kiss, Graphic Description of Injury, Hale fire, M/M, Panic Attacks, Season/Series 03, talk of branding/tattooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atsuyuri_sama/pseuds/atsuyuri_sama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The triskelion is more than just a brand on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Triplicate

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first TW fic - forgive me, because it's unbetaed. Please tell me what you think/if you find mistakes? Thanks!
> 
> Also - I don't own Teen Wolf or its characters. That's why I write fanfiction, and don't see a cent for it.
> 
> ETA (7/10/14): Just added hints of Cora, to stick with the continuum I’ve built; if you want to re-read you’re welcome to it, of course, but the changes are really minor.

Tattoo Artist: “He’s right, tattooing goes back thousands of years. The Tahitian word _tattooa_ means to leave a mark – like a rite of passage.”

\-- _Teen Wolf_ , season 3 episode 1, “Tattoo”

**-IT-**

When Derek was seven, his father made a new, iron doorknocker for his mother.

Hailey Hale nee Wilson – a tiny woman with long black curls and piercing grey-green eyes – was a bitten wolf. It happened in her late twenties, and led to her meeting the man she’d eventually marry, Garrett, in a neighboring pack. Even through her Change, one thing had always been a constant: her mothering instinct. Part of that drive shifted with the birth of the first Hale child, into a desire to provide a suitable home for her family.

On the other hand, Garrett Hale was a born werewolf, eldest and only son of the renown Hale Pack – well known in the werewolf community for its size, prosperity, and ability to live among humans without discovery. His Change was literally in his blood, and he’d grown up with abilities greater than the humans that populated the world around him. He proved to be a powerful figure, with broad shoulders and hard brown eyes. At a young age, Garrett took up crafts of all kinds – woodwork, metalwork, and masonry – in an effort to channel his strength, and train himself to react gently. His brother Peter insisted that he was gay – because only gay men took up crafts instead of sports to learn how to gauge one’s power around humans – and was proven wrong by the arrival of Hailey.

It was family lore that part of how Garrett won her over was his ability with crafts – the year after Derek was born, Peter began to insist that his sister-in-law had been won over when her boyfriend had given her a house he’d built himself after proposing to her. Every year she got three new things from him – for her birthday, their anniversary, and Christmas. Most of their furniture, Laura and Derek’s baby toys, some of Hailey’s jewelry, and trinkets around the house were all Garrett’s handiwork.

So, when Derek was seven, his father made a new, iron doorknocker for his mother. It was a triple spiral – a triskelion.

Hailey loved it, citing her favorite view of the three arms: mother, father, children – a family. Her fingers always traced over the top spiral the most, following the iron arm three times as she murmured under her breath, “Laura, Derek, Cora. The Children. My hearts.” And then like clockwork, she would follow the curl and trace her finger over the lower right arm, “Garret. The Father. My husband.” She dubbed the lower left, “And Hailey. The Mother. Me.”

She traced it slow and careful on lazy days when no one had to go anywhere or do anything, every time she passed the front door – going so far as to open it if it was closed. On days where she passed by the door because she had somewhere to go, but it wasn’t urgent, her finger trailed quick and light over the knocker as a whole and her mouth carefully found the words. And on the days when emergency sprung unexpected, her fingers wouldn’t even touch the metal, and she would automatically breathe the words as she passed the threshold.

For a while, that was what the innocent symbol meant to Derek, too. Then his father took him and his sisters aside to explain what it meant to their family as an influential Pack. His fingers followed the same path – top, lower right, lower left – but his words were different. “Present. Future. Past. Don’t forget, you both claim the Hale name. Laura, you will be the next Alpha, and Derek, your children will bear our name. Cora, you won’t carry on our name, but you _will_ carry on the honor and ties of the Hale Pack to another. You must always remember how time folds in on itself. Connections made in the past – enemies, friends, allies, adversaries – will always have a place in your present and future, will always have an influence on who you grew to be once, how you are who you are, and by what means you will become who you become. Time is fluid, and what you do affects what you will do. My choices as an Alpha will affect your choices, and yours will affect your pups.”

And this was what the triple spiral knocker on his front door meant to Derek, and it was good.

**-IT-**

When Derek was fourteen, Laura chose to spend the evening with a friend, and he himself stayed late at practice.

To be nearly home, and see the dark plume of smoke billowing above the treetops—to smell the acrid stench of burning fur and skin—to hear louder, and louder the closer he got, the _snap_ then _crackle_ and then _roar_ of a hungry flame—to taste the grey ashes on his tongue as the wind turned… It was unspeakable.

Numb fingers dropped his school bag. He tuned out the screams of panicked, trapped Pack in a desperate bid to avoid madness. His eyes passed like glass over the shadowy figure in the tree line that… looked like… no! Not now! With a wild howl, he raced at the front door, intent on knocking it in and freeing his family.

His first strike brought him nose-to-wood with the door, and while it shuddered, it did not move. The dull red of a super-heated knocker blazed in his vision as he backed up to try again. Another howl, another race, another earth-shattering crash that didn’t quite loose the door. Shaking his head to clear the ringing (screaming), Derek growled, and decided to put his shoulder into it this time.

Just as his left shoulder slammed into the wood, a violent gun shot sliced the air above the roar of the flames. The wood of the door, overstressed by the fire on one end, Derek’s frantic efforts, and the gunshot, splintered, and Derek’s momentum sent him tumbling to his back. As he toppled over, his traitor eyes registered the sight, and his traitor mind believed it, of his girlfriend, of Kate. A gun was trained expertly on him, and her eyes glittered with madness.

And then it was all over in white-hot burn. The red-hot iron found the space between his shoulder blades as both he and the knocker succumbed to gravity, and was turned white-hot as a flash-flare – drawn by the rush of oxygen presented by the suddenly-opened door – seared his back and threw him out into the lawn. Landing face-first, the iron stuck to his skin, burningburning _burning_ , the skin bubbling and blackening even as the iron cooled. Derek didn’t have enough breath to scream; didn’t have enough presence of mind to move, because the screams not his own had _stopped;_ didn’t lift his head, not wanting to see the haunting specter of a woman he’d trusted watching his whole _world_ fall apart.

Derek left himself go. (he never noticed a tiny figure stumble out the open door; she passed him, thinking him dead, lying there so still)

A hysterical Laura woke him, shaking his shoulder frantically. She’d come just as soon as she felt the mantle of Alpha fall to her. She’d seen him lying free of the hungry remains of their home, a tendril of smoke curling from his back, and feared the worst. She hauled him into a sitting position, and with a tiny squelch the cooled metal of the mostly-melted knocker unstuck from its heated grasp of his skin as he struggled to heal.

The ambulances and police cars arrived quickly, but not soon enough. Derek couldn’t feel any of the Pack (except Laura); his home was a smoldering ruins; and the symbol both his parents had cherished was burned into his flesh beyond his ability to heal. He had what had been deemed impossible: a scar.

It was a scar. A bold, irreversible reminder seared into his skin of his inability to save his Pack. A brand that he would have to see every time he looked at his back in the mirror. A sick, hollow reminder of his mother’s love of family, and his father’s sense of duty as Pack Alpha.

And that, now, was what the tri-armed brand of black on his back meant to Derek, and it was bad.

**-IT-**

When Derek was twenty-four, in the midst of an Alpha Pack encroaching on Beacon Hills, he was approached by Scott with a request that brought memories pouring over him.

It was an accident that he’d discovered a method of ‘tattooing’ a healing-capable werewolf. Scott asking him how, referring to the brand between his shoulder blades… Derek had long ago buried the bad memories (and the good—it was better to be numb) behind the mark, but it was still difficult.

Flicking the torch on, telling Stiles to hold Scott down – it was only by virtue of Derek’s self-control that he didn’t shake. Smelling the cooking flesh, hearing the bloodcurdling screams, watching Stiles’ knuckles go white as the 147 pound human struggled to hold back his werewolf best friend, though, he began to sweat. It, ironically, only got worse when Scott blacked out.

“… Derek?”

“ _What_ Stiles?” he growled, trying to keep the sense-memories at bay.

“Are you… you know, oaky?

Grunting ambiguously had never failed him before. His nose wrinkled minutely against the growing stench of burnt flesh.

“I just—That is, we’re, you know, um, _here_ , and—Well you’re currently wielding a _blowtorch_ against a—Well, Scott’s not your _friend,_ according to you, but… And here, in this _house,_ and—”

Derek whipped his head up, holding steady, red bleeding into his eyes menacingly. The noise he loosed was more of a rumble deep in his chest than any human warning; Stiles shrunk back. His face was a riot of conflicting emotions (and if one of them proved to be pity, Derek would _not_ be held responsible for his actions), and he couldn’t seem to drag his honey-colored eyes away from Derek.

“I was just concerned, man. I know part of your past in this house; I have a good idea what fire must do to you; and having both in this place – against living skin – I just imagined wouldn’t be the best thing ever for you. Is all.”

Derek ignored him, lifting up Scott’s arm to get underneath, while grabbing for a handy length of metal to help define the sharp shape of the tattoo bands. As he brought the torch back around to the blackened-not-yet-healed skin on top, with the shiny double band of metal placed too brightly over it, Stiles let go of Scott’s shoulders. The strips of metal slowly colored with the applied heat, and – even unconscious – Scott whined high in his throat, though he didn’t squirm. As Derek slowly tracked the metal – lifting with tiny suctioned noises when the super-heated metal strove to stick to crispy skin – around Scott’s ravaged bicep, Stiles slowly crept closer to Derek. The one time Derek looked over through the corner of his eye, he looked away just as quickly, those gold eyes glowing too oddly in the firelight.

With one final turn, the deed was done. His own unwilling tattoo throbbed.

Before he realized what he was doing, the cherry-red, skin-stuck metal had been flung too hard (as far away as can be), dropping into the dirt just outside of the house. It took a moment of heavy breathing to realize the ringing in his ears was partially a left-over of his own broken shout. Consciously this time, the blowtorch followed suit, in the opposite direction, and then Derek shoved away from the unconscious (burned, burned by _him,_ breathing – the teen’s still breathing, right?!) Scott, and curled into himself.

“Whoa! God! Derek, dude, what the hell?!”

“Derek?”

“Aww man, dude… This is a panic attack. I used to have them all the time; just breathe with me. Hey, hey – come on, dude, breathe with me. In, out. Feel that? In, out.”

“That’s right. You’re okay. That’s it: just breathe. You’re alright.”

When Stiles stopped sounding like he was coming from under water, Derek finally began to recognize what his own skin felt like again. Nervous ants crawled all over his body, and he was shaking faintly, but it was getting better. The feel of Stiles plastered full-body along his back, arms desperately tight around Derek, squeezing hard enough that he would have bruised were he human was grounding. Derek clung to the feel of someone else right there with him… Pressed tight enough against his back that the throbbing of his tattoo was gone, pressed close enough that the smell of burnt skin was muted under familiar spice.

Abruptly, Derek realized that he’d partially wolfed out, and that the long claws of his right hand were digging bloody furrows into Stiles’ wrist where he’d gripped it tight. He dragged in a deep breath, head spinning with the sudden influx of oxygen, and slowly forced his cramped fingers to release their grip. As he did that, Stiles sighed gratefully into his ear and murmured, “Hey, man. You with me? Derek?”

“I… yeah.” Derek rasped, still tense. “You should… get those looked at.”

They slowly separated, Stiles eyes searching Derek’s face. He was serious, and quiet.

“… sorry.” Derek turned away to grab the first aid kit that Scott had dragged along with them when they brought Isaac in. He gathered up alcohol wipes, antiseptic cream, gauze, and medical tape, and laid them on the floor in front of the kneeling Stiles. Gently, Derek grabbed his arm and brought it close to a sharply-scented wipe.

Stiles watched his ministration, wincing faintly as the alcohol stung the claw-shaped grooves in his skin. He chewed pensively on his lower lip, and stayed still as Derek meticulously cleaned the blood away. “Don’t worry about it, really: Forgiven and forgotten. Seriously. It’s no big deal. I get hurt worse chasing down, oh I don’t know, rabid werewolves and murderous kanima’s,” he grinned unrepentantly at Derek, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “I _have_ gotten worse. And you were… well, you were panicking, you know? Nobody would blame you for needing to hold onto something in a moment of desperation. But…”

Derek waited tensely as he put the wipes aside and began to apply the cream. Finally, he couldn’t take the suspense, and grumbled softly, too gruffly, nervous, “But what?”

“But,” Stiles lifted his uninjured arm to Derek’s shoulder, waiting until wary grey-green eyes met his own, and coaxed, “ _but,_ something made you freak out. And I know – from my own experiences, at least – that it helps to talk about it if you never have before. You don’t have to. I know we don’t, um, have the best history in the world. But, really, if you think it’ll help… I mean, I’m here to listen. You know. Just in case.”

They both watched silently as Derek carefully applied the tiny gauze pads to the four-and-one wounds, the white standing out sharply against skin that was slowly but surely bruising, connecting the marks in a violent parody of a hand on his arm. Derek’s lips were pinched, and his eyes were focused too hard on Stiles’ arm as he gently taped the gauze down.

“I…” he started. His hand came down, over-warm palm covering the white bandages, and his breath hitched. Stiles sat and waited patiently, unmoving, unthreatening, nonjudgmental. “I got my… _tattoo_ the day my—The day the—When _this,_ ” he gestured impatiently at the ruins of the house around them, “happened. Nobody knew how to permanently mark a werewolf before then. I—” he faltered again.

There was no reason to be telling Stiles this. Stiles had no bearing on his past, no reason to hear his sob-story. There was no telling what Stiles would do with this information… but no matter what went through his head, Derek couldn’t see a conceivable future where Stiles used this moment of weakness against him; that just wasn’t Stiles’ style.

He was staring at his dark hand over Stiles’ pale skin, breathing tight again. A slender, calloused, too-breakable hand entered his vision, grasped his chin, and lifted his eyes to meet an open gold gaze. Stiles didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t smile or frown or sneer. But everything about him radiated a sense of brotherhood (and didn’t he loose his mom when he was young, or something?), an understanding deeper than skin, a comfortable air of _it will be okay._

And with Isaac – unconscious, still injured – in the corner, and Scott – also unconscious, still shiny with pain-sweat – slumped in his chair behind them, Derek spilled his guts to Stiles. Uncovered the good and the bad of the spiral and his brand. The tension bled out of his body. When Derek refused to cry, tears poured down Stiles’ face instead.

Somehow or another, Derek ended up with the neck of his shirt pressed tight against his throat as Stiles pulled at the back, revealing the brand. His fingers traced it (just like Mom, just like Dad), and he breathed it’s meaning according to Derek (because he couldn’t-wouldn’t take what had been his mom’s or dad’s meanings) with a quiet reverence, “Alpha, Beta, Omega.” Derek shivered.

“It’s… It fits you, Derek.” That’s it; no platitudes, no flowers, just flat statement. He was grateful: if Stiles had tried any pity Derek would have taken his head off. “It means something to you – something more than just a reminder of your past. You wear it like a symbol of your family, but also like a mark of who you can become. It fits.”

The heat of Stiles’ hand across the brand – Stiles’ knowledge – made new what was old. The deeper memories were still good. The deepest nightmares were still bad. The scent of burnt flesh in the hollow old house, the recent memory of agonized screams, the willing mark from himself to another – those would take time for him to get over.

Dry, chapped lips pressed fleetingly against the center of the mark. Derek couldn’t hold back a shiver, even if he did so without a sound. It was a lot like a burn which has finally transitioned from painful wound to shiny, dead-nerved scar. Stiles was right: He could wear the brand—the triple spiral—the _triskelion_ , the symbol, with pride. It wasn’t about what had been anymore. It wasn’t about what was. It was about what had the potential to be.

(The potential for a born wolf to find a Changed wolf and build a family. The potential for a born Beta to rise to the challenge of being part of a broken Pack. The potential for a child to survive the crushing horror of burning and the shattering guilt of betrayal and manipulation. The potential for a man to return, and to make something new for not only himself, but for those needy few who also desperately needed a Pack - and an Alpha-once-Beta - of their own. The potential for a new-better-fuller forest to grow after the old has burned down. The potential for a Mate in one distracting, energetic, gangly young man, perhaps.)

That would always be what the triskelion of his Pack meant to Derek. And it was hope.


End file.
